A New Beginning
by Atiaran
Summary: When Samara makes good on her promise to return to Omega, Patriarch is faced with a decision. Shepard identifiers though it's largely irrelevant : Fem!Shep; Paragon, Earthborn, Sole Survivor.
1. Chapter 1

**Standard disclaimer: **None of the characters, places, etc. in this story are mine, but are instead the property of Bioware. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story.

**Author's notes: **Not much to say about this one. Part of its genesis lay in Samara's line of unique dialogue on Omega when she mentioned that when Shepard's quest was done, she might come back here to clean the station up; it occurred to me that Aria probably wouldn't like that. The other part lay in the Patriarch sidequest, where if you take the Paragon option, you offer to act as Patriarch's krantt in taking care of the guys who wanted him dead. It occurred to me that realistically, in doing that, Shepard was making a promise she had no intention of keeping—she and her crew were not going to hang around Omega Station acting as Patriarch's enforcers, for any number of reasons. So while Patriarch might receive a slight, passing boost from her actions, it was not going to be a long-term thing and, realistically, the status quo would almost certainly reassert itself once she had left.

I like Samara a _lot,_ and I thought that her scenes would be easy to write, but when it came to it I had real difficulty handling them and I'm not happy with what I came up with. I hope I did her justice.

This one is unbetaed—my usual beta was on vacation and wouldn't have been able to get to it for several weeks. While I always appreciate her thoughtful comments and help on my fics, I really wanted to get this one up so I could "clear the decks" for the original fic I'm trying to revise. So it may be kind of rough around the edges. Sorry about that.

* * *

"An asari justicar? _Here?_" Patriarch sat forward on the varren-leather seat. It was whispered that Aria T'Loak had her sofas covered with the skins of her enemies, but what was said wasn't always true. _Well,_ Patriarch mused, _except for that __**one **__time…._

"_Yes._" Aria stood up, and began to pace the balcony restlessly. Her lieutenants watched from the sidelines, silent and waiting. Aria ignored them. "She just got in yesterday. And she's coming after me."

"Wait," said Patriarch, his mind working rapidly. "This is the one that came through a while back with Shepard, isn't she? Samara, she was called. Are you sure she's not just passing through like last time? Remember, last time she was just here for that Ardat-Yagi, or whatever your people call them—"

"_Yes,_ I'm sure," Aria snapped at him. "Shepard isn't with her anymore. She's on her own." She ran one hand over her eyes. "She issued a formal challenge to me. To _me! _Stepped onto the station and announced to everyone that she was here to bring Omega to balance. Said that she was giving me three days to get my affairs in order and get off the station, and after that—" Aria broke off, staring out over the railing. "After that, if I hadn't left by then, I would be declared anathema under the Code. That she would come for me, and that she wouldn't stop until one of us was dead. 'And if I fall, know this,'" she recited, "'that others will come in my place. Until the Code is satisfied.' _Goddess._" She rubbed at her eyes briefly. "I thought that was only _stories,_ I didn't think justicars actually _did_ things like that."

"We krogan have our own stories," Patriarch murmured. If she had been anyone else—any_thing_ else—he would have thought that this Samara was stupid or insane to tip her hand like that….but a _justicar…_ _That would be a battle to see,_ he mused, studying the slim form of Aria before him. She paced again, with short, trapped steps. Suddenly it hit him: _She's actually afraid._ He hadn't seen Aria T'Loak _afraid_ in…_well, ever_.

"What _are_ the asari justicars, exactly?" he asked.

She took up a bottle of asari wine and poured herself a glass, stared at it, then tossed it aside and took a gulp right from the bottle. "They're holy warriors. Not subject to the dictates of asari society, they follow a higher law—their Code. Codified over millennia and passed down from generation to generation, it dictates a justicar's actions in any conceivable situation. I guess the closest analogue outside of asari culture would be one of the knights-errant from medieval European Earth, if that means anything to you." Aria shivered. _"Goddess,_" she repeated again. She closed her hands on the rail and stared out over the crowded floor of Afterlife. "There aren't very many of them, relatively speaking, and usually they don't leave asari space. I never thought I'd find one out here. What am I going to _do?_"

Patriarch was silent for a long time, thinking. "Aria," he said at last, "I've been your…advisor…for near on two centuries. My advice for you now—_Run."_

"_What?_" Aria whirled around to stare at him with anger in her eyes.

"You heard me, girl. Now's the time to run." He faced her seriously. "Krogan memory is pretty damn long, Aria. Almost as long as that of you asari. We krogan remember…." He paused, putting his thoughts in order. "We have a story about one justicar—_one_—from the time of the Krogan Rebellions."

"Yes?" Aria asked. She had turned toward him and was giving him her full attention, hanging on his every word. Patriarch took a moment to relish the sensation of power. _Closest I get to actually __**having **__power these days._ He leaned back against the leather sofa, stretching his feet out in front of him.

"The name that my father told me was Ilea, but I don't know if that's the right one. It was kind of a situation like with Samara earlier, actually: she was on a quest of some kind, don't know what. She'd been ignoring the war entirely until her quest took her outside of asari space. Even then she wouldn't have fought, except that she happened to trip over the lead elements of one of our strike forces along the way, out in the Hourglass Nebula. When she saw us doing what we krogan do best," he added with a twisted smirk, "she stopped long enough to issue a challenge to the krogan general. Rungor Vraen. He laughed in her face. Big mistake." The smirk stretched into something more painful; this story was a little _too_ close to home, now that he thought about it. "That lone justicar managed to single-handedly destroy three whole divisions. The entire Fifth Army was wiped out. It took dropping a moon on top of her to stop her, and even then her body was never found."

Aria raised her hands to cover her face. "It didn't stop her," she said from behind that shield. "We have legends of her too. Ilea left your army behind because her quarry moved on." Aria smiled bitterly. "All _our _legends ever said about Justicar Ilea was that she left asari space seeking her prey, the Dark Matriarch Thamiris; spent some time outside, and then returned to run her prey to ground. The final battle between them devastated an entire continent, and ended in both their deaths. And now, one of them is here, on Omega, and she's after _me._" She wrapped her arms around herself. "As the humans would say, _oh shit._"

Aria turned away to stare out over the balcony again. Patriarch picked up a clam from the bowl at his side and placed it between the rows of his sharp, conical teeth, shattering it with a crunch. To his not-inexperienced eye, Aria looked like she was on the verge of seriously losing it. Once, he would have have taken a bitter joy in such a sight, but that had been long ago; now, the best he could manage was a sort of mild, detached pity. _Looks like you're in over your head this time, eh, girl?_ "Sounds like it really _isn't _about you personally," he offered. "She just wants to clean up Omega. Frankly, it could use it," he added, enjoying the foul look she gave him. "So, let her. Pack up, hand over the station to her, go somewhere else. Start again. You're young, you've got centuries left. Plenty of time. Go somewhere else and you'll be fine."

"Are you _insane?"_ Aria demanded. "Leave _Omega?_ I _am_ Omega!" She raised her arms. "I built this station from the _ground up_—"

"No, _I _did that," he interjected with some acerbicity. "I built it, and you took it from me. Keep your history straight, girl."

Aria ignored him. She clenched her hands around the balcony railing so tightly that her knuckles showed white. "I _won't_ lose this station. I _can't_ lose this station."

"Then you're going to lose your life," Patriarch told her bluntly. "One or the other. Can't have both."

She whirled on him again, striking him with an angry glare. "Oh, you'd _like_ that, wouldn't you?" she hissed. "Me getting killed by one of Shepard's gang, a member of your so-called _krantt?_" Aria sneered the word. "I see. You're hoping she'll get rid of me and set you up in my place again. You _actually _believe that would happen?" Her sneer deepened. "Get real. Shepard and her gang never cared about you. They never wanted to fight beside you, shed blood with you. Did Shepard _ask_ you to join her crew? Well, _did she?_" He was silent. "Didn't think so. The only reason they were helping you at _all_ was because _I_ asked them to. _Everything you have_ comes from me, and don't you forget it."

Patriarch's claws dug into the arm of the sofa, hard, but he did not respond. Aria had said worse to him before. Krogan skin was thick enough to absorb a few barbs…or so he thought.

_She's __**really**__ getting worked up though…._

"_Look_ at you," Aria sneered. "Who _would_ want to fight beside _you_ anymore, anyway? You're nothing more than a worn-out, pathetic, _weak_, broken-down old shell!" Her voice was rising; heads were starting to turn all the way on the other side of the club. "You're not even a _krogan_ anymore—"

Patriarch could feel his breath beginning to come hard. Blood was pounding in his head. The thought crossed his mind dimly that making a scene like this wasn't helping _Aria's_ reputation any, either. He could feel his claws pierce the leather covering of the sofa on which he sat. A red mist began to swim before his eyes, and images of his talons closing around her soft, weak throat filled his mind; the blood rage was not far off now. "Aria, stop it," he said through his teeth. "I'm warning you…."

She tilted her head to one side, then with lowered voice and a vicious smile, delivered the final blow. "Why in the _world,_" she asked venomously, "would a galactic _hero_ like _Shepard_ want to fight alongside someone like _you?_"

The words went into him like cold steel sliding between his hearts. His rising anger collapsed. Aria had ripped it away from him, just as she had taken everything else. His shoulders slumped and his head bowed. He could only sit there, hearing the breath whoosh in and out of his lungs, feeling shaky. Weak. All the things she had said he was. She had defeated him without lifting a finger, without a blow being struck. Aria studied him a moment longer; then that razor smile softened into one of approval. She turned and spoke to the small crowd of onlookers, her advisors and captains.

"We're staying," she announced grandly. "This is _our_ station, and if that justicar wants it, then she'll have to fight us for it. And I don't think she can win." One hand dropped to the top of his crest, stroking him as if he were no more than a varren. Patriarch allowed it silently. He felt empty inside. Aria strode off, her lieutenants around her, leaving him behind. _Worn out and useless._

[*]

It took him a while to pull himself back together—much longer than it usually did after one of Aria's little tongue-lashings. He hadn't realized until then just how much he had treasured the idea of being part of a _krantt _again. _And not just any krantt either—__**Shepard's**__ krantt._ Everyone in the galaxy knew who Shepard was: the human hero who had singlehandedly defeated the geth, who had killed the rogue Spectre Saren, smashed the Council, and upended the entire galactic order in the space of an afternoon. It seemed like new tales of Shepard's great deeds poured in by the day. They said she'd done the Rite, on behalf of a crew member of hers, and actually killed the thresher maw; when _his_ time had come, he'd barely _survived _it. And best of all, Shepard was a female, even if a human. That such a one might actually want _him_—might find him worthy, after all this time, to fight alongside: to go out to the battlefield together, water the ground with the blood of their enemies, then return to the camps to drink and boast of their great deeds—was intoxicating. It was almost as sweet as battle itself.

_Ah well. Too good to be true._ Aria was right, of course. Why _would_ a hero like Shepard want someone like him? After all, she _hadn't_ asked him to join her crew, though she'd snatched up Archangel from the jaws of death, and even whisked that salarian doctor off from his clinic in the slums to ride the stars with her, daring peril and danger in pursuit of glory. _She already __**has**__ a krogan, so they say—a __**real**__ krogan, not a broken-down wreck like me._ A dull bitterness burned in his hearts.

He retreated to the quarters Aria had given him for the rest of the afternoon, with a bottle or two of ryncol for fortification. By the early evening, he felt steady enough to go out again, and he set forth, in search of the justicar. Broken-down wreck or not, he was still Aria's Patriarch, dammit, and he knew his duties well. If he could convince her to leave the station peaceably, it would be better for everyone. _And besides…_well, he'd never met a justicar before. _I wonder, what is it about her that can cause such fear in Aria's heart?_

A couple of discreet queries located this justicar for him: she had taken over an abandoned warehouse in the Lower Market district. The place was in one of the worst sectors of Omega, but Patriarch wasn't worried about that; after all, he was still a krogan, wasn't he? _Day I can't handle a few vorcha and batarians by myself is the day I just go ahead and get that damn leash and collar, after all._ And besides—his jaw tightened at the thought—Aria's favor protected him.

The warehouse looked deserted when he got there: the door was closed and red-locked. He rang the entrance chime a few times, wondering why this district was so empty; normally the area would be swarming with vorcha, but he hadn't seen more than a handful since he'd gotten in. It almost looked like a set-up for an ambush, except that the _feeling _was wrong, somehow.

_Well, __**whatever's**__ going on, it's damn creepy._ The silence weighed on his nerves. The shadows seemed to cluster thickly in the corners; it felt like he was being watched, but Patriarch hadn't spotted anyone, and his skills were still good enough for that, anyway. _I hope._

Finally, after several minutes of chiming with no response, Patriarch activated his omnitool. Aria had given him a keycode some time ago that could open every door on the station. _Well—__**almost**__ every door, that is._ He tapped it in, and as the door rolled aside, he peered into the vast interior of the warehouse.

"_Hello?_" he called out. No response. Cautiously, he took a step forward, then another and another, moving deeper into the gloomy, echoing interior. The door rolled shut behind him with a bang, and he actually started.

_Goddamn it. Get ahold of yourself,_ he snarled. _You're jumping at everything like a plateless salarian._ He muttered a curse between his teeth. All his senses were firing, warning him to be alert, that he was _not alone,_ but the maddening thing was, he couldn't _see_ anyone. He continued forward, another step, then another, advancing through piles of empty crates and boxes that bulked in the dark. Aria wouldn't let him have any weapons heavier than a simple knife—_"What need do __**you**__ have of weapons?"_ she'd said with that edged smile when he asked. _"I've given you all the protection you'll ever need."_ Now he put his hand on the knife hilt, cursing her in the back of his mind.

"_Hello?"_ he called out again, his words echoing in the cavernous space. "I'm the Patriarch. Aria's Patriarch. I came down to see you. Thought we could have a little chat. About what's best for this station, best for Aria. Best for you, even. See if we can find a way to make us all happy." He paused. There was no answer. The air cyclers whispered quietly in the far corners of the warehouse. "Hello? Is anyone—"

He broke off as motion caught his eye. It was a mere flicker—perhaps nothing more than an indrawn breath—but it was enough; his wide-set eyes focused, and he began to make out the outlines of a dim asari form at the back of the warehouse, where the darkness was deepest. She was sitting facing the wall with her back to him, so still that for a moment he wondered if she were actually alive; but then his eyes picked up the very faint biotic glow surrounding her. She showed no sign of acknowledging his presence.

_She doesn't know I'm here._ He couldn't believe it. Perhaps, Patriarch mused, she was so lost in whatever she was doing with her biotics that she had taken no notice of him. Carefully, he drew nearer to her, his eyes fixed on her open and unprotected back. His talons clicked on the hilt of the knife at his hip. The thought crossed his mind that if he were quick and sure, he might be able to end this now and save them all some grief….

As fluidly as water, Samara unfurled, rising to her feet and turning to face him all in one smooth motion. "Patriarch."

She was tall, perhaps as tall as he was, and pale blue in color. Her face had a strong bone structure that managed to be fine without being delicate. Her eyes were pale blue as well, almost to the point of being white—the mark of a pureblood, Patriarch knew, and was surprised that a pureblood had managed to attain such an exalted position as that of a justicar. Like Aria, she was trim and leanly muscled, with a dancer's lithe grace, but the similarities to Aria ended there. Whereas Aria oozed a dark, lurid danger, shot through with lodes of raw sensuality, there was none of that in Samara.

Oh, the danger was there all right, but it was somehow different in kind. Samara was as perfectly balanced as a porcelain sculpture, yet with none of such a sculpture's fragility; there was that about her which would neither bend nor break. The dominant impression Patriarch received in those first few moments was one of almost unfathomable power, and above all _force of will,_ kept ruthlessly in check by an absolute and unforgiving self-restraint. If Aria was a dagger this one was a rapier: slender, elegant, and limitlessly deadly.

The force of her presence was so strong that Patriarch actually found himself staggering backward as if she had pushed him, and he thought:

_Aria. Oh, Aria, girl. This one is __**far**__ out of your league…._

After a heartbeat, he collected himself. "You…knew I was here all along?"

"Of course." Her voice was light, cool, precise. "You had hardly made an attempt to keep your presence secret. I apologize for not responding to you earlier, but I was meditating. I am loathe to interrupt my meditations before it is absolutely necessary." She paused, and then inclined her head. "I am Justicar Samara."

"And I'm the Patriarch," he repeated, unnecessarily. Samara studied him.

"The Patriarch. Shepard spoke to me of you." Pale blue eyes regarded him. "She had a great deal of respect for you."

"Not enough respect, apparently," Patriarch said with some bitterness. "But, that's neither here nor there. I came on behalf of Aria—"

"Aria T'Loak. Yes." Samara inclined her head. "You may tell her that my challenge remains in force. She now has two and a half days remaining to leave this station. At the end of that time, if she is still here, I will come for her."

"Yes, Aria knows about the challenge," Patriarch answered, "but that's not what I came to talk about. I'm here to talk about terms."

One brow lifted. "Terms?"

"Yes. Terms." Patriarch shifted from foot to foot. "Mind if I sit down? Not as young as I used to be. Age catches up even to krogan, you know."

Her pale lips curved with a trace of humor, startling him. "And to asari. Please."

He slowly and painfully levered his way down to the floor. Samara joined him, flowing down to a seated position. Patriarch observed this with some curiosity.

"Are asari legs supposed to bend that way?" he couldn't help asking.

"The _yil_-flower position enhances the flow of biotic energy throughout the body." Again, her lips curved slightly. "It does take some getting used to."

"Still looks like it hurts." Patriarch settled back on his tail, leaning his hump against some boxes behind him. "Must admit, I didn't have much trouble on the way in. This sector is usually crawling with vorcha."

Samara nodded. "Several vorcha packs attacked the warehouse the first night I moved in. I made an example of them. The message seems to have gone out; I haven't been troubled since."

"Oh." Patriarch engrossed himself in cleaning his talons, surreptitiously studying her. _Did she just say she singlehandedly killed multiple packs of vorcha?_ If Aria had said something like that, it would have been tinged with subtle, but unmistakable threat; but Samara had spoken as a simple statement of fact. He yearned to pry further, but decided to let it pass, though he filed the information away to pass on to Aria. Instead he turned to the purpose of his visit. He sat forward, lacing his talons together before him.

"Look here," he told her. "We're all creatures of the world, wouldn't you agree? Krogan and asari---we're two of the longest-lived races in the galaxy. We have a natural kinship that way—we share perspective the shorter-lived species don't. Surely you, me and Aria can put our heads together and come up with a deal that's fair to both sides."

Samara regarded him. "Did Aria send you?"

"Well….technically, no," he was forced to admit. "But I've known Aria a long time. On certain matters, she trusts me to act for her."

She nodded. "I thought as much. An asari would know better than to try and bribe a justicar. The challenge stands. Aria T'Loak must leave or die within two and a half days."

"I'm not offering you a _bribe,_" Patriarch said with a trace of exasperation. "All I'm trying to do is work out an _arrangement._ Tell me what you're after and I'll see if I can't get it for you. I have some pull with the girl, and if it's not too outrageous, I'm sure I can get her to go along with it. Surely you must agree that it would be better to avoid an incredibly destructive fight if at all possible. Because I'll tell you this: if you _do_ fight her, one of you is going to die, and I wouldn't lay odds on it being Aria. The girl is strong—believe me, I know," he said with old bitterness.

He paused, waiting for her reaction. Samara was silent for a long time, her pale eyes studying him. He wondered if she were going to take the deal, but when she spoke, her words surprised him. "It was…not well done of her…to call you Patriarch," she murmured. "She thought to demean you and did not see that she demeaned only herself. But you have taken the title she gave you in scorn and made it something noble, simply by being as you are. No," she said firmly. "There is nothing I will accept from you. The challenge stands."

"I—but—" Patriarch groped to recover himself, taken aback by her unexpected words. "Look here, there must be _something,_" he finally came up with. "All right, perhaps not credits or equipment, but _something._ Look, you have to understand," he told her. "Aria _is_ this station. In her own way, she loves it, as much as she can love…well, anything. Ever since she took it from me…. I know the girl well enough to know she'll never leave Omega while she still has breath. But she can give you—"

"The kinds of things that might sway me are not the kinds of things that Aria T'Loak has to offer. Indeed," Samara added, "from what I have seen, her presence is actively inimical to them."

"What kinds of things _do_ interest you?" Patriarch found himself asking.

"Peace. Justice. Order. Fairness. The rule of law. All things that are in short supply on Omega."

"No argument there," Patriarch grunted. He was silent for a time, thinking. At last he looked back at her. "You truly intend to fight Aria?"

"If she will not leave—"

"She won't."

"—then I intend to kill her." One brow went up.

He grunted again, shifting a bit. "She won't go down as easy as all that, you know."

Pale eyes regarded him, across the gulf of centuries. "Know this: I have fought many, many others like her. I do not fear the outcome."

Something about the way she said sent a shiver down his spine. _She sounds like she really means it._ He paused, collecting himself. "Nothing I can say to change your mind, then?"

"There is not. Although it is a credit to you that you attempted it." She paused. "I respect your effort, Patriarch, but I am sorry to tell you that there was no chance I would ever accept your offer. The challenge stands. Aria T'Loak has three days to leave the station; after that, she dies."

"Huh." Patriarch cast around for something else he might say to her, but came up blank. This justicar was so different from anyone he had ever known that he hadn't even the slightest idea where to start; though it was axiomatic that everyone had a price, he suspected that Samara was correct when she said hers was not something Aria could pay. _Can't say I haven't tried, _he thought with a shrug.

"Well, thanks anyway, for taking the time to listen to a battered old wreck like me," he said gruffly. With a groan, he levered himself to his feet again. "I'll go back to Aria. Tell her what you said. I'll warn you though—she's not going to like it. Might even send assassins after you—"

He broke off as the slight smile touched Samara's lips again. In an undertone, she murmured, "She already has."

"I—what—" Patriarch began, then broke off as Samara glanced meaningfully upward. Following her eyes, he saw a catwalk suspended high above the warehouse floor, almost invisible in the gloom. He stared at it, hard, and had just time to make out a flicker of movement along the iron railings before a bright biotic glow flared out around Samara. A glowing sphere shot from her hand to impact with the railings, and the catwalk snapped like string. Three humanoid forms came spilling off it, to crash into the ground not ten yards away from them with such force that Patriarch could hear their bones snapping. The three forms, two batarians and a turian, lay still with the stillness of death.

"I—That's Ran Jako's team," he said. "Some of Aria's best. How did you—" He looked up at her, more than a little impressed.

"I have had centuries to learn to detect stealth," Samara said calmly. "I was aware of them the moment they entered the building. I am sorry if they were friends of yours—"

"Hell, no," Patriarch snorted. "They were thugs and rabble, as almost all of Aria's crew are. I never said it, you understand, but the world's better off without them." He allowed himself a moment of sour enjoyment, imagining Aria's likely reaction to discovering the fate of her assassination team, then looked from the bodies to Samara again. "You didn't feel like taking care of it until now?

"They were not a threat till now. All things are to be dealt with in their proper time. And besides…I was enjoying talking with you, and didn't want to spoil it." She gave that slight smile again.

"Well, anyway, I should go. Can't wait to get back to Aria and tell her what happened to her team," he added with a sideways grin of his own. "She's _really_ going to be coming for you now, though. Don't say I didn't warn you."

As he turned to go, Samara called out to him again. "Patriarch." He looked back. "Why do you stay with her?"

_Why indeed…_ The answer to that question had once been complex; but Patriarch had been considering it for so long that, somehow, over the decades, it had become simple. He looked from the bodies on the floor to the poised form of Samara, and sighed. "Aaaah…Aria and I have been together a long time. You might say, our history's a bit like a thresher maw's tongue: long, messy, and you don't want to get too personal with it. The end of it all is, I can't leave the girl. She needs me." He shrugged. "Call it part of being a krogan, if you want—we have a weakness for strong females."

Samara nodded. "You are loyal. I respect that. Loyalty is a noble quality. But on its own, it is never enough. You must always consider: what is the nature of that to which you are loyal?" She regarded him. "I sincerely hope I do not have to kill you, Patriarch."

"I hope so too," he said, and took his leave.

[*]

When Patriarch got back to Afterlife, the usual line of people outside waiting to get in was absent. It wasn't hard to figure out why, either: Aria's voice, raised in anger, could be heard all the way in the corridor outside the club. Patriarch grimaced at the sound of it. _Damn. Wonder how long she's been at it…_

The club itself was almost deserted; about the only sentients in evidence were the bartenders, huddled behind the bar looking nervous. Aria's shouting echoed through the empty confines of the place. Patriarch nodded to Anto, the head of Aria's bodyguards; he was stationed at the stairs leading up to Aria's balcony.

"Evening, Anto. How is she?" he asked quietly. Above them, Aria was still going on.

The batarian blinked his four eyes. "She's been worse…or so they say. Myself, I don't believe it. It's a good thing you're back, Patriarch," he said with evident relief. "You might want to brace yourself before you go up there, though."

"Duly noted," Patriarch returned. He drew a breath, and started up.

As he reached the top of the stairs, a wine bottle came whistling through the air at him. Patriarch saved his face by a quick dodge to the left. Fragments of broken glass peppered him, but he ignored them; krogan hide was thick enough that they did no real harm. Besides, he needed all his attention to deal with Aria.

"_You!_" Aria raged at him. Her blue skin was flushed almost purple, and she was breathing hard. "Where the _hell_ have you _been,_ you worthless, pathetic _varrenshit-licker?_ _Answer_ me, or I'll put your quad in a vise!"

"And a pleasant evening to you too, Aria," Patriarch replied, moving forward cautiously. Out of the corner of his wide-set eyes, he could see Aria's lieutenants cowering at the edges of the balcony, and unobtrusively motioned them toward the stairs. He was seriously alarmed, though he tried not to show it; he had never seen Aria in such a condition before. "Why yes, I'm doing well, thank you for asking. Yourself?"

"Don't you play your games with _me,_ you wombless eunuch!" Aria snarled at him. "I asked you a _question._ Where in the _seven hells_ have you _been?_ I sent Jako's team out _six hours_ ago to take care of that justicar, and they _still_ haven't reported back in. And if you— _Where the hell are you going?_" she shouted at her lieutenants, who had been sidling toward the stairs. They promptly halted, their eyes going fearfully to Aria.

"Jako _won't_ be reporting back in," Patriarch interjected, taking another step forward. "He and his team are dead. Samara killed them."

Aria froze, considering. The moment seemed to stretch out. "All right," she said at last, low and menacing. "All of you, get out. _Not you,_" she snarled at him. "But the rest of you. _Go._"

It wasn't quite a stampede for the exits, but Aria's lieutenants didn't waste any time getting out of there, either. Patriarch rocked himself back on his heels and dug in, waiting. When the balcony was at last empty, she turned on him.

"All right. All right, you cuntless varren-dung spawn. You're going to tell me how you know that. _Now._" Yet she did not lift a hand; her biotics remained quiescent within her. _There's that at least,_ Patriarch thought. The two of them had long since passed the point of attacking each other physically, or so he thought, but seeing Aria like this made him wonder….

"Because I went down there to visit Samara this afternoon," he answered steadily.

"_What!_" Now the storm broke; Aria's biotics flared to life around her. A priceless third-century Dilinaga glass table lifted itself from the ground and went hurling through the air to smash into a wall. "When the hell did I even give you permission to _leave the bar,_ let_ alone _have anything to do with that _justicar?_ What the _hell_ were you trying to do, sell me out? I ought to flay that miserable krogan hide right off your _back, _you titless, gutless—"

Patriarch sighed, suddenly very tired. "Aria, stop it with the name-calling," he told her wearily. "It's not helping anything. You know I wasn't trying to sell you out; if I wanted to do that I could have done it decades ago—"

"I'd have ripped your shriveled little quad off and shoved it down your throat if you'd _tried_—"

"That too," he acknowledged. He sighed again. "You _know_ I wasn't trying to sell you out, girl. We're long past that now, you and I. In fact, I was trying to save your pretty blue hide. The least you could do is _thank_ me."

Aria stared at him for a long, long moment, breathing hard, her biotics rippling around her in corona. Slowly, the aura around her faded, and she sank down on the couch behind her. She was still panting, and she raised one arm to wipe sweat off her forehead. Patriarch watched for a moment longer, to be sure the danger had subsided, then took a seat opposite her. Aria glared at him.

"I didn't say you could sit down."

"I'm old, I've been on my feet all day. If you have a problem with it, shoot me and be done." Aria let it pass. Patriarch leaned back in his seat, watching her. After a moment, she raised her hands and ran them over her face, then caught up another wine bottle by the side of the couch. She took another long gulp from it, shuddered once all over, and raised her eyes to look at him.

"What happened?" she asked.

Patriarch shifted a bit. "So, I went down there early this evening," he told her. "I thought I would see this justicar and ask if there was anything we could offer her to convince her to leave the station."

"You should have cleared it with me beforehand—"

"I thought it would be best to do it informally," Patriarch countered. "Better to give you the possibility of denying it, if the need arose."

Aria considered for a moment, then nodded very reluctantly. "That makes sense," she admitted. "Don't ever try anything like that again without telling me first, though," she added, glaring at him. Patriarch shrugged. In reality, he would do whatever he felt necessary, and both of them knew it. _But if it makes her happy to go along with her…._

"So…" Aria ran her hands over her face again, and glanced up with a strange expression: raw cynicism tinged with something that looked very like a desperate hope. "What did—did she say?"

"She said no, Aria," Patriarch told her gently, and watched the light in her face go out. "Said that there was nothing we could offer her to get her to leave, that the kinds of things we _could_ offer her—"

"—were not the kinds of things she would be interested in," Aria finished for him, her expression as sour as if she had bitten into an Earth lemon. "Of _course_ that's what she said. All justicars are like that. Going down there to talk to her was a fool's errand in the first place."

"Maybe so," Patriarch acknowledged, letting the jibe pass. "I also went down there because I wanted to have a look at her. See what we're up against. Like I've told you a thousand times, girl: know your enemy."

"I _already _know my enemy, you plated imbecile," Aria snarled. "She's a _justicar_. All asari girls are raised on tales of justicars, from the time they're in their cradles. Believe me—" Aria drew a shuddering breath "—I know what she's like."

"Well, _I_ didn't," he responded. "I wanted to see what she was made of. Take her measure."

"And?" Aria leaned toward him, putting the wine bottle down at her side. She was clearly giving him her full attention. "What do you—what do you think?"

He drew a long breath. "I stand by what I said earlier," he said quietly. "Your best choice is to run."

He had braced for the explosion, but none came. Aria stared at him, frozen-faced, then stood up. She turned her back on him and walked to the railing, standing there silently, looking out over the empty floor of her club. The reddish lighting flickered on her skin. After a moment, he continued.

"I was there, when Jako's team attacked. She killed them all, all three of them, without even breathing hard. She told me she'd already killed most of the vorcha in the sector, all by herself, and I saw no reason to disbelieve her. I know—I know you don't like to hear this, girl, but she's out of your league. Aria?" he tried. "Aria, girl, are you listening to me?"

Her back was to him, tense and rigid; her head, bowed. "I can't leave."

Patriarch sat forward. "Of course you can. If the choice is between leaving and dying—"

"No. I _can't._" Those hard shoulders trembled. Alarmed, Patriarch rose from his seat and went to stand beside her.

"Aria, Aria—you _can_ leave, you _have_ to—"

She turned away. Her hands clenched in fists at her sides. "I can't. I _can't._"

"Yes you can. Yes, you can, girl. Here. Come here." Without even thinking about it, Patriarch put one arm around her shoulders, drawing her back down to the couch. He could feel her trembling against him like a live wire overcharged with current. "Come on, Aria," he said. "What do you say? No shame in knowing your limits. If this justicar is out of your league, then she is, that's all. Staying and fighting isn't going to do you any good." She felt very small under his arm; he'd always been amazed that something as small as she was could contain so much power. "Just go. It won't be so bad. I'll go with you, I promise. The universe is full of hives of scum and villainy out there, just waiting for an asari and her pet krogan to whip them into shape. We could go to Korlus," he suggested. "Or if you don't want to go there, there are any number of Terminus Systems worlds I can think of. You've got centuries ahead of you, and me, well, I've still got some good decades left in me yet. What do you say?"

"No. I can't leave Omega." The words were muffled; she leaned into him as if she were taking shelter in his lee, and she pressed her face briefly against him. Perhaps it left the front of his tunic a little damp, but what of that? He wouldn't tell anyone. And anyway, when she finally pulled away from him, her eyes were dry. "I have to fight her," she said, composing herself with an effort. "I have to stay and fight her…to prove I'm not afraid."

"Aria, with all due respect, that's just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," he told her bluntly. "Prove you're not afraid? To _who?" _She didn't answer. "I _know_ you're smarter than that, girl. _Come on. _If you run, you can—"

Aria cut him off. She jumped to her feet and paced to the balcony, then turned on him. "No. I'm _staying,_" she insisted. "I've never run from a fight in my life and I'm not starting now."

"Girl, don't be a fool—"

"_Enough._ I've made my decision. I'm staying." Her eyes narrowed. "_Patriarch._"

The word was both an insult and a reminder; he forced himself to swallow what he had been going to say next. Aria gave a thin smile. She drifted over to the couch opposite him and resettled there. Another gulp or two from the wine bottle, and her equilibrium seemed to come seeping back.

"Who knows," she mused, half to herself. "Things have been too quiet on this rock for a while now. I haven't had to put down a real threat to my power in decades. A fight with this justicar could be just the thing—a chance to remind everyone just _why_ the only rule of Omega is what it is. And if—_when,_" she corrected herself at once, and took another swallow of wine. "_When_ I defeat her, can you imagine the stories?" That thin smile returned. "Aria T'Loak, the slayer of Justicar Samara. That's something to think about, all right."

She glanced at him. Patriarch remained stubbornly silent. Aria's brows drew together in irritation an she snapped her fingers at him sharply. "Enough about her. _Patriarch._ Come, let's talk of other things."

He hesitated a moment longer, then sighed. "If you wish, Aria."

The two of them sat alone in the empty club, discussing station business, long into the night. Patriarch held up his end of the conversation as best he could, but he couldn't shake a pervasive air of _unreality_—a sense that everything they were discussing was trivial and ultimately meaningless in the light of what would come in less than two days' time. Whether Aria sensed it or not, he couldn't have told, but she continued to drink heavily from her wine bottle throughout the evening; her head began to droop, her eyes to drift closed, and the pauses in her conversation grew longer and longer. At last, having put the same question to her three times and gotten no response, he looked at her closely and realized she was asleep.

With a groan, he levered himself up off the sofa. His left knee ached; Aria had shattered that one, during their climactic fight, and even though it had long since regenned, there was still a tell-tale stiffness to it after he'd been sitting too long. Patriarch ignored it. "Aria," he said quietly. "Aria, girl." He reached out and took her by the shoulder, shaking her gently. The wine bottle fell from her limp fingers, and her head rolled, but her eyes did not open. _Out like a light._

Bracing himself to take her weight, he slid his arms under her and lifted her up off the couch. Aria mumbled and shifted a bit, settling against his chest, but did not open her eyes. Manuevering carefully with her in his arms, he made his way through the deserted club, toward the back and up the private stair there. Aria's door was one of the few rooms that the keycode she had given him would not open, so he carried her to his own quarters, through the living room to the sleeping chamber at the back. With a strange gentleness, he laid her down in his own bed, then pulled the sheets up around her and carefully tucked them in. She shifted slightly, and nestled deeper into the covers without wakening. Patriarch stood there, looking down at her for a long moment, remembering.

_Aria, Aria…._ She'd been so young when she'd first come onto this station as a dancer, in the years years ago, back when he had been the foremost krogan warlord in the entire system. She'd been just the tiniest little slip of a thing, limber and lithe just as he liked them in those days…not that there had ever been anything between them, of course. Back then, Patriarch had made it a strict policy never to get involved with any of his dancers—_only common sense; you don't shit where you eat,_ he'd used to say. If he'd been better at enforcing that rule among his men, he mused ruefully, maybe things would have gone differently. And in all the centuries since she had broken him and seized the station for her own, despite all the things she had turned to him for, she had never turned to him for that. _Who knows why,_ he mused. _Perhaps for the same reason._

_Even back then, you had that gleam in your eye, didn't you, girl? The one that said "I'm going to rule the world."_ He just hadn't seen it. Hadn't recognized it for what it was, until it was already too late and the balance of power had shifted on its arm.

_As it is shifting now?_ Patriarch didn't know. But he'd been on this rock longer than anyone else alive. He knew its rhythms, felt its currents; they pulsed in his blood, were woven into his bones. _Aria claims that she's Omega, but she's wrong. __**I**__ am Omega._ And something within himwas whispering that once again, a change was coming; like a tide slowly gathering force, yet inexorable once in motion.

_Samara. That justicar._ She was one of Shepard's _krantt_, and if anything so mythic as heroes still roamed the galaxy, Shepard and her crew were it. He watched the extranet, and what he saw there of her deeds was impressive, but he _also_ knew where to look to get the rest of the story, and the underground information networks had been buzzing with chatter about her ever since she woke up. The consensus that was rapidly building there was that if even half of what was rumored about Shepard and her _krantt_ was true, then the best thing to do was to avoid them at all costs. _And now, one of that band is here. Just at the moment the tides begin to turn…._

_Aria. Aria, my girl…._ Patriarch reached out with one talon. Gently, he brushed her soft blue cheek, and wondered what he would do when the time came.

The next day, he went to talk to Aria's men.


	2. Chapter 2

Patriarch awoke the next morning to a low, distant booming, echoing and reverberating through the air like the rumble of far-off thunder. As he came to full wakefulness, he realized that there was a subtle, yet repeated shiver passing through the structure of the station: Omega was trembling around him. It took him a moment to put the two together, but when he did, he shot bolt upright. _Attack!_

He started to leap up, tripped, and fell flat on his face; he'd forgotten that he'd taken the couch last night. A quick glance at the sleeping chamber showed that the door was open and it was empty: Aria was gone, probably already dealing with whatever was happening. As he dressed with fumbling haste, his mind raced with possibilities: _Batarians?_ No, they'd been quiet lately. _One of the merc groups?_ But the ones on the station wouldn't dare, and Aria'd been careful to keep on the good side of the ones who controlled the sector, anyway. _Pirates?_ But that was what Aria paid the merc groups for, to keep the pirates down. _Geth? Out this far? Unlikely…._ That left only two possibilities of those that suggested themselves to Patriarch's fevered mind, both equally far-fetched: Either agents of whatever trouble it was that Shepard had stirred up—the extranets insisted that it was geth she had been fighting, but the picture Patriarch got from his own sources was of something much darker and far more disturbing—or else….

_Or maybe Shepard herself._

_Come all the way back to Omega just to snatch you up to go off adventuring with her? Hah!_ With a snort for the delusions of a wistful old krogan, he gave himself a stern shake, brusquely dismissed such thoughts, and set out to see what was happening.

Outside of his quarters, Patriarch was surprised to find none of the frantic activity he'd expected to see. Perhaps the corridors were a bit less crowded; Afterlife itself was less busy than usual, even for the time of day, but that was it. There were no alarms going off, no sirens blaring announcements for everyone to get to the shelters, no raised blast shutters. Occasionally during an especially severe tremor, one of the bartenders would put his hands over a row of bottles to keep them from falling, but that was about it. The dancers were still there, strutting and grinding on the poles above the bar; the customers were still bellied up to the bars sucking down drinks or tucked away in shadowy corners; the music was still pounding; pretty much everything was as usual.

_Almost everything. _A quick glance up at the balcony showed that Aria wasn't there. _What in the world….?_

He spotted Anto in his usual position by the stairs and went over to him. _"Anto!_" he shouted above the throbbing music. _"What's going on?_"

"_Huh?"_ The batarian blinked his four eyes.

"_What's going on?_" Patriarch leaned closer. _"Are we under attack?"_

"_Are we—what? Oh—no!_" Anto seemed to grasp his meaning. _"No—it's that justicar!"_

_Samara?_ Patriarch rocked back on his heels. Quickly, he reached out and grabbed Anto by the shoulder, drawing the batarian off to a corner where it was quieter and they wouldn't have to shout.

"What's going on with Samara?" he demanded. "The time for her challenge isn't up yet—"

"No, not like that," Anto corrected him. "I'm not really sure of the details, but from what I heard, early this morning that justicar went down to the lower station and just started cleaning house." Four eyes blinked at him. "She'd been asking around for what was the worst sector on the entire station. A bunch of people directed her to Level 10, Sector 5—you know that's as bad as any—" Patriarch nodded. Aside from being absolutely overrun with vorcha packs, Level 10 was home to some criminal and slaver gangs so nasty even Aria stepped lightly around them. "So apparently, this morning, the justicar just walked in there by herself and said she had come to shut everything down. You can imagine what the reaction was."

Patriarch drew in a breath. "Well, that's one way to solve our problem, I guess—" He broke off at Anto's laugh.

"Are you kidding? She kicked their asses. Cleaned out the entire sector, moved on to sector 6, did that one too, cleared sector 7, and she's still going. That's what all the crashing is," he said, bracing himself against the wall as a particularly bad tremor rocked the station. "From what I hear, she looks set to clear the entire level by the end of the day."

Patriarch frowned, considering. "I bet Captain Gavorn's not going to like that," he mused.

"_Gavorn?_ He's _ecstatic,_" Anto replied. "Said he's been itching to clean out that cesspit for months. Matter of fact, on Sector 7, the justicar came across a squad of his that had been cornered by a vorcha pack. She wiped out the vorcha pack and saved his guys, then ordered them to come along with her to finish cleaning the area. One of his guys called him on the comm and told him about it, and he actually sent a couple more squads down to her for backup."

"Really." The station rocked again; over behind the bar, a couple of bottles slid off the shelf and crashed. Patriarch clicked his claws against the hilt of his knife. "What's Aria think about this?" he asked, glancing meaningfully to the empty balcony.

Anto shrugged. "No one knows. She's locked herself in her quarters and left orders that she was not to be disturbed by anyone. Frankly, after the way she was last night, it's sort of a relief."

"Huh." Patriarch studied Anto for a long moment, then nodded towards a booth tucked away in the shadows. "Come on. Let's sit down and have a drink, what do you say?"

The batarian shifted uneasily. "Patriarch, Aria would rip my eyes out if she found out I'd been drinking on duty."

"If she finds out, you can tell her I said it was all right. Come on." He led the batarian to the booth and sat him down, then slid into the seat across from him. "What'll you have?" he said, catching the eye of a server and waving him over. "Batarian ale?"

"Well…." Anto hesitated again. "All right, sure."

"Batarian ale and a ryncol," he ordered. As the server hurried off, Patriarch leaned back in his seat. "So, Anto," he began. "You've been working here for how long now?"

"Fourteen years," Anto replied.

"So, not that long then."

"Long for a batarian," Anto corrected, as he'd known he would.

Patriarch let it pass. "And how's Aria been treating you all that time?"

Anto's eyes blinked as he pondered. "She's rough," he said slowly. "Not saying she isn't. But she gave me my start. Before she hired me here at Afterlife, I was living down in the lower sections, fighting the vorcha for a corner to sleep in or a scrap of food. I owe her a lot," he admitted. He shifted uneasily again. "But I know what you're getting at, Patriarch. My owing her only goes so far."

"How far is 'so far?'" Patriarch pressed bluntly.

The batarian sighed. "I don't know," he confessed. "I guess tomorrow we'll find out." He snorted a grim laugh, then winced as a particularly loud crash echoed through the bar. The server who had been bringing their drinks to them staggered and dropped the tray. "Damn. I was looking forward to that ale."

Patriarch simply nodded. "How do the rest of your men feel?"

"Not sure," Anto admitted. "It's strange—there's never really been a situation like this for as long as we've all been here. We all thought Aria would be on top forever. No one on the station could even touch her, and now…."

"She's always come out on top so far," Patriarch replied. "Throughout all our history together, it's never been smart to bet against Aria."

"Yeah, well, there has to be a first time for everything." Anto shifted. "Look, Patriarch, I appreciate your offer of a drink, but I really need to get back to work. When tomorrow comes…." He blinked. "I won't fight against Aria. That's all I can give you right now. If that's not enough for you—"

"It's not a question if it's enough for _me,_" Patriarch replied, with a shrewd glance at him. "It's a question of whether it's enough for_ her._"

"Yeah, well…." Anto blinked again, uncomfortably. "I should go." The batarian got up from the table and moved off. Patriarch watched him go, considering. When the server came back with the two drinks and placed them before him on the table, Patriarch studied them for a moment, then with a shrug, downed them both. The station rocked again as he got up, transferred some credits to the bar's account, and took his leave.

[*]

The station continued to tremble and reel throughout the rest of the day, shuddering with the impact of distant explosions and echoing to the sounds of combat taking place within it. Once or twice throughout the day, alarms and sirens went off with reports of hull breaches in various sectors, but the repair teams were always able to get on top of the damage quickly. Though the combat was confined to the lower sectors, even in the upper levels voices were hushed and people moved through the corridors in a subdued fashion, reaching out to brace themselves against walls when the station rocked after an especially severe concussion. To Patriarch, the people of Omega seemed to be waiting.

In the afternoon he went out again, looking for Captain Gavorn. The turian was the closest thing to the head of security on the station; he was in charge of making some effort to keep the overall vorcha population in hand and shooting any vorcha that happened to wander up from their dens in the lower levels. The turian was not in his usual place outside Afterlife; Patriarch found him in the small, stuffy closet that passed for his office, speaking into a desk-mounted comm unit. When Patriarch appeared at the door, Gavorn glanced up, waved him in, and kept on talking.

"Okay, Seltris, I hear you. Rotate the troops out and send two more fresh squads down to her. What? Yes, make sure they have extra heat sinks and power cells. Send some rations too, just to be on the safe side— _I _don't know, there's got to be some place around there that has turian-safe sandwiches and drinks, just run a few of those in. How much more does she have to do? Really—by evening? Well—I've got to go, but I'll check in again shortly. Keep me posted. Gavorn out." He shut off the comm, then looked up. "Patriarch. Something I can do for you?"

Patriarch ambled in and took a seat in the scuffed plastic chair on the opposite side of Gavorn's desk. "Sounds like you're having some excitement," he said, nodding to the comm unit.

"Yeah. Tell the truth, it's about time," Gavorn said. His mandibles flared a bit. "Level Ten's been a hellhole for years. They're all bad down there, of course," he added parenthetically, "but Ten's definitely one of the worst. I've been wanting to go in there and clean the place out for a long time now, but I could never muster enough force to do it. Now this justicar shows up and…" He trailed off, shrugging underneath his armor.

"You been down there? Seen her?"

"Yeah," Gavorn said. "I went down a few hours ago just to check on how things were going. She's…impressive." His mandibles flared again.

"Hm." Patriarch grunted, thinking. "Care to offer a ryncol to a thirsty old krogan?"

"I don't think I have anything a non-turian can drink," Gavorn replied. "I can check the stash, if you want."

"Nah. That's okay." He mulled various ways to approach the subject, then with a mental shrug, dove in. "So, I'm sure you've heard about the challenge."

Gavorn snorted. "Hasn't everyone? The whole station knows."

"What do you think?" Patriarch asked bluntly.

Now Gavorn's mandibles closed up and his pupils constricted. "I think the whole matter's above my pay grade, that's what I think."

"Think Aria will accept that answer?"

Gavorn looked away. "I'm just here to do my job. Nothing more."

"The job that Aria _gave_ you," Patriarch pressed him. Gavorn said nothing. Patriarch leaned forward. "Which side will you be on, Gavorn? You know that Aria has always made loyalty worth your while. And punished betrayal just as severely."

Gavorn shifted. His mandibles remained tight to his jaw as he regarded Patriarch. Carefully, he said, "Aria may not be around for much longer." As Patriarch stared at him, Gavorn added, just as inflectionlessly, "I've seen this justicar fight."

Patriarch sat back in his chair, somewhat taken aback. Around him, the station shuddered to another distant explosion. Gavorn had been on the station for a while, though nowhere near as long as either himself or Aria, of course; for a member of such a short-lived species, he knew a great deal about combat. His estimate was worthy of serious consideration. After a moment, Patriarch ventured, "She's that good?"

Gavorn glanced toward the door of his tiny office, and touched something under his desk, as if verifying that no one could hear them. At last he looked back at Patriarch. "Better," he said quietly.

Patriarch mulled this new information. "You know Aria likes to fight dirty."

In that same flat voice, Gavorn replied, "I can't believe it would help her this time." He sat back in his chair, his mandibles flaring again. "Ahhhh…you know me, Patriarch. I never wanted to deal with any of this political crap. I'm not good at it. You know that. I've got enough on my hands just shooting vorcha all day. I can promise you this," he said, sighing. "When the time comes, I won't help the justicar. But that's _all._ Don't ask for anything more."

"Anto said the same thing," Patriarch said glumly. "Before I go—what's happening to the people down there where the action is? Sounds like a lot of damage going on—the last thing we need is for innocents to get caught in the crossfire."

"Well, the justicar's doing the best she can to minimize civilian casualties," Gavorn replied. "There really weren't that many innocents living in Level Ten anyway—the environment's too nasty. From what I hear, that human woman, Helena Blake, has been doing her best to get everyone out of harm's way—you might want to go talk to her."

"I will. Thank you for your time, Gavorn." He paused, then added deliberately, "See you tomorrow."

"We'll see," Gavorn replied. He bent to his desk and reopened his comm channel as Patriarch turned to go. Around them, the station was shuddering.

[*]

Helena Blake was an elegant older human woman who had arrived on Omega about two years ago and promptly plunged into doing the kind of charity work to which humans, asari, and, to a lesser extent, turians seemed so addicted. Patriarch knew very little about her. She obviously had a great deal of money; Patriarch was not good at telling status among humans, but all the credits to fund these operations had to come from somewhere. He had heard whispered rumors that she had once been the head of a major criminal syndicate, and other rumors that Shepard had been the one to "convince" her to shut it down, but he hadn't been able to say for sure. When she'd first come onto the station, Aria had turned a close eye on her, watched her long enough to make sure she wasn't a threat, then dismissed her. "If she wants to spend her time feeding and clothing the poor, fine," Aria had said, shrugging. "But if she forgets the one rule of Omega, _then_ things will get rough." She'd given that cruel smile of hers. "And I bet I play rougher than she does."

The human woman was not in her usual place in one of the lower rooms of Afterlife when Patriarch went to find her; after some searching, he located her at the transit hub down the corridor. She was surrounded by small mountains of supplies and speaking into her omni-tool when he encountered her.

"—and send over all the blankets you can find immediately. Tell them to bill the charges to me. Yes, that's right, Helena Blake. And stores of nutrient paste as well—both levo-protein and dextro-protein. I'll transfer you the account number—Hold on, I'll have to call you back." She shut off the omni-tool and turned her attention to him. "Well, if it isn't the Patriarch himself," she greeted him cordially. "I'm terribly sorry, but this isn't a good time to talk—I'm trying to organize food and shelter for about a thousand refugees at the moment." Another distant explosion rocked the station. "Oh dear," Helena sighed rather whimsically. "I suspect that number just went up."

Patriarch frowned. "Captain Gavorn said that Samara—the justicar," he clarified at her blank look "—was taking pains to spare civilians."

Helena Blake's face clouded. "The justicar went through Level Ten's slaver district about three hours ago and freed the prisoners there. They have nothing but the clothes on their backs, poor things. _Someone_ has to look out for them."

"You sound angry."

"I am," the elegant human woman replied curtly. "Slavery is a _vile_ practice, loathsome and reprehensible. Even in my former days, I never tolerated it for an instant. I cannot think of any institution that is more abhorrent to sentient dignity." She paused. "Is there something I can do for you, Patriarch? I'm rather busy at the moment, but…."

"Captain Gavorn directed me to you," Patriarch responded. "I just came by to see how you were doing caring for the refugees, and if there was anything you needed."

"Anything I needed. Hm. Well, if Aria would open her empty warehouses on the third level, that would provide excellent short-term housing for all the displaced persons, at least for a couple of days. Also—" she gestured at the mountains of crates around her "—I could use some large hoversleds for all the supplies. Transporting them one carload at a time is simply taking too long."

"I'll see to it," Patriarch replied. As Helena watched, he spoke briefly into his omni-tool, relaying the necessary orders. "Sleds should be here in fifteen minutes or so, and the warehouses are open for you."

"Thank you, Patriarch," Helena said, smiling. "I truly appreciate your help."

"Think nothing of it." He paused. "So I'm assuming you've heard of Samara's challenge?"

"To Aria? Of course," Helena responded. "It's not quite how I would have done it, were I her, but say what you will about her, that justicar certainly has a sense of style."

"What do _you_ think?" Patriarch asked with real curiosity. "When she comes tomorrow, which side will _you_ be on, Helena Blake?"

The human woman raised one eyebrow. "The side I am always on, of course: that of Omega's population. The _only_ side." She paused, studying him. Patriarch waited, wanting more from her, somehow, but not certain how to phrase his request. At last, she sighed. "You want to know who I think will be better for the station?"

"You can trust me."

She nodded. "Everyone on the station knows that, Patriarch. Even though you are Aria's man." A small smile crossed her lips—_not dissimilar to Samara's smile,_ he thought distantly. She surveyed the area briefly, looking for anyone else who might be listening in, then continued, "I will say only this, Patriarch. There are a lot of innocent people on this station who are suffering due to the way Aria runs Omega. Obviously I haven't been here anywhere near as long as you have, but from what I can tell, that seems to have been the case throughout her entire tenure as ruler. If she were to go, I don't think many on this station would complain. I'm sure you understand."

"I do," Patriarch replied thoughtfully. He hesitated a moment longer. "When Samara comes for Aria tomorrow….will you spread the word? Make sure the civilians are all tucked away safe? It could get ugly."

"Of course," Helena said with another warm smile. "Now if you'll excuse me, I really do have to get back to work." She paused. "Good luck to you tomorrow, Patriarch. Whatever it may bring."

"Thank you, Helena," he replied sincerely, and took his leave.

[*]

That evening, Patriarch sat in Afterlife long past closing time, nursing a bottle of ryncol and mulling over what he had heard. The station was quiet again; the distant crashes and explosions had died with the coming of night. _I suppose even all-powerful justicars have to sleep sometime,_ he mused. According to Gavorn, Samara had been indefatigable throughout the day, systematically moving through Level 10 sector by sector at a pace his men had been hard-pressed to match. _A formidable fighter indeed._

Aria had not been seen all day. Her balcony had been empty, her door closed and red-locked. Patriarch had tried to contact her a couple of times, but had gotten no answer; nor had anyone else, from what he had heard. She'd had food sent up to her—_whatever the girl's been doing in there, at least she's not starving—_but Patriarch had no idea what her state of mind was.

With a sigh, he leaned back and stretched his feet out before him. His left was knee aching again and he rubbed at it absently. _A broken-down old krogan on a broken-down old station, that's what I am._ He took another gulp from the bottle of ryncol, and massaged his eyes with the back of one talon. _Anto. _He'd been suspecting the batarian of looking for outside work for a while now; Anto's refusal to pledge that he would support Aria didn't surprise him at all. _But Gavorn?_ Gavorn had enough of that turian sense of duty that Patriarch would have counted on him to stick by Aria to the end. _Whatever happened to turian loyalty?_

He thought back over what he had known of Gavorn's history: the man had been a small-time gang leader before Aria had hired him. His instructions from Aria had been simply, _"Keep the vorcha out of my sight,"_ and he'd done that job admirably, expanding his gang and transforming it into the closest thing Omega had for a security force. Once he'd been hired, Aria paid him little attention except to make sure that he still remained loyal, and throughout the years he'd been working for her, he'd never given any indication of selling her out….

Now a new thought occurred to Patriarch, making him sit up. _But what if…it wasn't really Aria he was loyal to after all? Or what if his loyalty started that way, but then changed to something else? All that talk about wanting to clean up Level 10—why bother? How would that help Aria? _It wouldn't, was the answer. Aria and the criminals who ran that level had a good agreement going: she left them alone and they left her alone. _So why would Gavorn care? What if—_ The thought suddenly struck him, made him sit up. _What if it's no longer Aria he's loyal to, but…the station?_

_Is that even possible here? _He frowned, all his years here, he would have thought not. Omega wasn't a place that allowed time for noble sentiments. He cursed under his breath. _Damn turians. They take them and practically breed all that stuff about duty and self-sacrifice for the greater good into them from the womb, or the shell, or wherever turians come from._ He would have said that Gavorn was just another thug, like all the rest of the scum on Omega. He would have sworn it. _But…who knows._ Maybe giving him a position like the one Aria had given him had reactivated all those old turian instincts for loyalty and service to something greater than oneself.

_Like Aria isn't enough for him?_ he thought with a twist of mordant humor.

For some reason, Helena Blake's words came back to him, about the effect of Aria's policies on the station, and he rubbed at his eyes again. _She's not wrong, of course._ Aria had no interest in anyone who was below her line of sight. If they weren't big enough to be either a threat or a potential ally, she couldn't care less about them. There were whole sectors full of people on Omega who had come here for no other reason than to seek a better life, only to wind up as prey for the merc groups, the gangs, the drug runners, the slavers, or even the vorcha, and Aria did nothing to help them.

His jaw tightened. _And was it any different when you were in charge? In the years years ago? _Of course it hadn't been. Like Aria, he'd taken no interest in the suffering of those people either. At the time, it'd just seemed like it didn't matter. He'd been more focused on hanging onto and expanding his own power than anything else, and besides, it wasn't the krogan way to care for the weak. _The strong do as they will while the weak endure what they must. As it should be. _

Somehow, he reflected grimly, that sentiment had sounded a lot better back when he had been the strong one.

_Aaah… _He growled under his breath and took another gulp from the ryncol bottle. W_hat could we really do for them anyway?_ The problems of Omega were intractable. Always had been, for as long as he'd been there. _That damn fool Archangel thought he could solve things by shooting, but if it were that simple, then Omega wouldn't be the charming cesspit it is. _Sure, they could shut down a slaver gang here, bust up a drug ring there, but it would be like playing that ancient Earth game that he had heard of once. _What was it called? Whack-a-Mule?_ Another one would just pop up two sectors over. What had Archangel's idealistic crusade gotten him?

His jaw tightened again. _A ticket on Shepard's ride, that's what it got him._ And Samara seemed to think she could do better than he had.

Patriarch set the bottle of ryncol down. He leaned on the table, staring into nothing, lost in thought.

_The problems of Omega are intractable._ But _were _they? He thought they were unsolvable, but no one in the station's history had even tried to solve them. He hadn't. Aria hadn't. For all his glory-hound antics, Archangel certainly hadn't; whatever _he_ might have thought he was doing, from Patriarch's perspective he'd been doing nothing more than nibbling away at the edges. Helena Blake wasn't, with all her vaunted charity work; she was treating the symptoms of the disease, but not engaging the source.

_And what is the source?_

Patriarch leaned forward, bracing his forehead on his talons. He did not like the answer towards which his mind was slowly, yet inexorably working. For some reason, Samara's words echoed in his head:

"_Loyalty is a noble quality. But on its own, it is never enough. You must always consider: what is the nature of that to which you are loyal?" _

With a sudden curse, Patriarch caught up the bottle of ryncol, drained it, and tossed it aside. _Enough of this varren-dung philosophizing. What are you, an asari? Time to lock up, go upstairs, and get some sleep. _ He'd been up much too late already, anyway; Aria would need him to be at his best tomorrow.

He started to rise from his seat when the door to Afterlife hissed open, and measured footsteps echoed in the interior. He looked up in startlement as a clear, precise voice said, "Patriarch."

[*]

"_Samara."_ For some reason, he wasn't surprised to see the justicar here, in this place, now. _Seems right, somehow. Fitting._ A strange pleasure came over him; despite it all, the sight of her gladdened him, brightened his darkening spirits. "Won't you sit down? I heard what you were up to today—hell, the whole _station _did," he added with grim humor. "You must be exhausted." Though she didn't look it, he had to admit: her pale blue skin was covered with dirt, smoke and grime, and her clothing stained with blood, but no hint of fatigue showed in her ramrod-straight posture.

Samara regarded him. "Thank you, but no. I cannot stay long. Soon, I must return to my lodgings to rest and prepare for the battle tomorrow."

"That so," Patriarch grunted. He studied her. "So, what brings you all the way up here? Come to convince me to leave Aria?" He was discomfited to find that he half-wanted her to try.

Pale eyes blinked at him. "I would never attempt to convince you to do that. You have made your choice, and not to respect that would be wrong and dishonorable. No, my purpose here is fourfold."

"Fourfold, eh?" A strange disappointment brushed him; Patriarch pushed it aside. "How so?"

"I have come for the following reasons. First," Samara began, "to prepare for battle tomorrow. I intend to challenge Aria here, in this place, the heart of her power," she explained, holding out one hand to encompass the bar. "And it is always best to know your ground if possible before a battle."

Patriarch nodded. "Wise of you."

Samara tilted her head. "Second," she continued, "I wish to ask you to pass a reminder to Aria. Tell her again that if she does not leave the station by tomorrow morning, I will come for her."

"I can pass the warning," Patriarch replied, "but she won't go. If she hasn't gone by now, she's not going."

"Nevertheless," Samara said calmly. "The justicar code states that I must ensure that Aria knows of the challenge, and give her every opportunity to leave before I fight her."

He nodded again. "That's two down. What's the rest?"

"Third," Samara continued, "I wished to request that tomorrow, efforts be made to keep civilians out of harm's way during our battle. If there is someone I must speak to, or arrangements that must be made—"

"Already taken care of," Patriarch said gruffly. "There's a human woman named Helena Blake. Does a lot of charity work on the station. She's seeing to it."

"Helena Blake. I have heard of that name." Samara considered. "I would not have thought to find her involved in such work."

"Apparently she changed her ways after a little run-in with Shepard two years ago." Patriarch felt his jaw tighten sourly.

"Shepard. Yes. And that brings me to my fourth purpose in coming here."

Patriarch waited, but she was silent. She tilted her head, and regarded him for a long moment, long enough that he shifted uncomfortably. At last she spoke.

"When we talked last time, I told you that Shepard had a great deal of respect for you. You replied that she had 'not enough respect, apparently.' What did you mean by that?"

"What—I—" Patriarch groped for a second, momentarily thrown by the change in topic. At last, he recovered. "Just what I said," he replied. "That however much she might respect me, apparently it…just wasn't enough."

Samara blinked at him. "'Enough' for what?"

_Enough for her to take me away with her._ "Enough to let me join her _krantt_ for real." As Samara looked at him, he gestured. "You know, to join the big, glorious fight against whatever galactic menace she's fighting against. She took Archangel. Took that salarian with her, but not me, despite what she said." He snorted. "Can't say I'm surprised, though. What good could a ruined old krogan like me be to anyone?"

He'd meant it to be ironic, cynical, but it came out with a depth of bitterness and real hurt that he could not suppress. Somewhat abashed, he looked away from the timeless asari warrior in front of him, raking his talons along the table. He could feel the weight of her eyes as the silence stretched out.

At last, her words came to him. "Shepard is…in an unusual position right now," the justicar said quietly. "Though she has earned our loyalty, her crew is … not of her own choosing."

"What do you mean?"

Samara tilted her head. "It is difficult to explain. But at the current time, Shepard is … nominally under the command of someone else."

"The Illusive Man." The words were a growl.

"You are aware of the arrangement?"

"I heard rumors. Couldn't believe it, that Shepard herself would be in thrall to another battlemaster," he snarled. "Let alone one so soft as this Illusive Man."

"The arrangement is…unusual," Samara explained. "It is not a comfortable one for either side. It is more akin to an alliance as you krogan would understand it—both of them are too strong for the other to take on easily, so they have decided not to fight but to turn their aggression to enemies elsewhere. I do not believe it will last long—"

"It _shouldn't,_" Patriarch rumbled. "Shepard should be _free_." He spoke without thought, and was vaguely surprised to hear himself voice such an idealistic sentiment. _Gods and ancestors, I sound like a youngling fresh from the Rite._

"—but while it lasts, it is the Illusive man who sets the parameters for her mission. He it was who brought her back from the dead and provided her ship, and therefore it is he who selected the personnel to accompany her."

"This Illusive Man chose her _krantt_ _for_ her?" Outrage flared within him, along with a tiny bit of sympathy—he knew all too well what it was like to be put on a leash. "How _dare_ he?" He realized he was brimming with fury at the very thought of a hero of Shepard's stature being treated that way. "A warrior's _krantt _is a sacred bond—_no one_ has the right to tell a warrior who to include in—"

"No." The justicar cut him off. "You are wrong. He chose us for the mission. That is all. _She _chose to make us her _krantt._" And while Patriarch was still trying to figure that out, Samara tipped her head. She said, again quietly, "I believe, if Shepard _had_ had the freedom to choose for herself, she almost certainly would have brought you aboard."

He stared at her. Somehow, his rage on Shepard's behalf was ebbing away, taking the surge of strength with it and leaving behind only himself, old and tired and long since beaten. He could feel the weight of every one of the long centuries of his life pressing down on him. "Why are you telling me this _now?_" he wondered.

"I do not know what will happen tomorrow," she replied, with that same regal distance. "If the worst should come to pass, I did not want to take my leave of you without letting you know Shepard's feelings."

"Ah. Well. I don't know whether I believe you," he told her bluntly. "But thanks for saying it, I suppose. It's pleasant to think that someone in this galaxy still thinks I'm good for something." _Even __**I**__ don't think that anymore._ "Good luck in the battle tomorrow, justicar. I wish…." He studied her. "I wish it didn't have to come to this," he said, and was surprised to find that it was true.

Samara merely nodded. "And good luck to you and yours, Patriarch." That smile touched her lips again, bringing an unaccustomed warmth to her face. It was a subtle smile, devoid of cruelty, as Aria's almost never was. _That's the sort of smile that makes you want to see it more often,_ he thought. "If I survive, perhaps we can discuss this at greater length afterward."

"Perhaps," was all Patriarch said. He cradled his empty bottle as Samara turned on her heel and retreated; he sat alone in the empty bar, listening to her steps echo and die away to silence.

[*]

When Samara left, she seemed to have taken the momentary lift in his spirits with her. Patriarch was suddenly exhausted. He sat there for nearly a quarter of an hour, trying to find the energy to get up and at least go to the rooms Aria had given him. At last, he managed to heave himself to his feet. A few brushes at his omni-tool locked the doors to Afterlife; he himself made for the private set of stairs that led to both his and Aria's apartments. He hesitated before going to his own quarters. _Suppose I'd better check in on her, just to be sure she's all right…._

He stopped outside her door. Chiming a few times produced no response. She might have been asleep…but somehow Patriarch didn't think so. He tapped the comm link.

"Aria?" he tried. "Aria, girl? It's me. Patriarch. I know you're not asleep yet…. Let me in, girl. Please? I—"

Abruptly the red lock on the door shifted to green. The door hissed as its cogs retracted, startling him, and the heavy mechanism rolled aside, revealing a darkened interior.

Cautiously, Patriarch stepped inside. The lights were all off; the only illumination came from the big bank of windows that looked out over the long, jellyfish length of the station. The lights of the stars and of the station shone through the clearsteel windows, but they were not strong enough to truly challenge the dark. He could see Aria's shape, standing at the windows, looking out over her station, and approached her carefully.

"Aria?"

She did not move. There was something about her silhouette in the darkness that made Patriarch wonder if she had been standing there for hours, just looking over the station that was hers.

"Aria, girl?"

Still no response. Daring, Patriarch stepped up beside her. Aria did not move, did not acknowledge his presence in any way. Silently, the two of them stood side by side, looking out over the twinkling metal edifice of Omega.

When she did speak, it startled him. "She's coming for me tomorrow."

"She is," he acknowledged. He said nothing else, there was nothing he could say. Aria stood beside him, tense and unmoving. He rolled one eye to look at her.

Her voice was iron-hard. "I'm afraid, Patriarch."

"I know," Patriarch replied quietly. His hearts twisted within his chest.

Now she turned her head, glancing at him sidelong. "Will you stay with me…till the end?"

"Aaah...." He scoffed a bit. "I've got nowhere else I need to be, girl. You know that."

She did not speak, but a slight smile touched her lips. Patriarch had seen the same smile, or one very like it, on Samara's lips not two hours earlier. "Aria, girl...." He hesitated, then drew a breath and continued. "I have no children," he fumbled. "Never was fortunate enough to lie with a fertile female, least that I know of. But…if I _had_ had one, and she had been a daughter…." He paused. "I would have hoped she'd grow up to be a mean-spirited bitch like you."

Aria said nothing in reply, but the trace of the smile on her lips briefly bloomed into a flower of breathtaking beauty. Patriarch reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. Around them, the station hummed as its internal chronometers ticked the minutes away. In just a few hours, it would be morning.

[*]

As she had promised, Samara came for Aria the next morning.

The atmosphere in the bar had been tense since dawn station-time. Helena Blake had kept her word; the bar was completely empty of civilians. Not even the bartenders and dancers had shown up; instead, Aria was there with her bodyguards, all armed, all ready for anything.

"Gavorn!" Aria had demanded, seeing the turian was notable by his absence. "Where the hell are Gavorn and his men?"

Patriarch had tapped a quick inquiry into his omni-tool. "They're all down on Level 10 cleaning up after yesterday," he'd replied. Aria had said nothing, but her eyes had narrowed in a way that caused those standing close to her to draw back and look pale. Patriarch had the brief thought that he wouldn't care to be Gavorn should Aria live through this.

"Maybe she won't show," Grizzt had suggested hopefully. "Maybe one of the other assassination teams got her." Aria had sent out two more teams last night, with instructions to find Samara and dispatch her. Aria turned on him and raised her hand as if to strike; Grizzt had flinched.

"Then why haven't they reported in, you four-eyed imbecile?" she'd snarled. "No," she'd continued and drawn a breath. "She's coming for me. I can _feel_ it." And she'd gone back to pacing her balcony.

Aria had been right. Exacty seventy-two hours to the minute after Samara had arrived on the station, the door to the bar rolled back with a huge, booming _crash._ It had been knocked aside on its track with power enough to override the mag-locks. As the echoes of the crash died away, a voice called out, _"ARIA T'LOAK!"_

It was Samara's voice, tolling like a great bell, swelling, echoing and resounding till it filled every crevice of the bar, hanging in the air like a great, vibrating presence. _If the galaxy could speak,_ Patriarch thought crazily, _it would sound like that…_. And on the heels of that voice came Samara herself, moving with long, authoritative strides into the very heart of Afterlife itself. _"Aria T'Loak!"_ she cried again, her eyes going to Aria's form, reclining on her balcony. "_The time allotted to you is up! This is your last chance—leave the station or die!_"

_She's glorious,_ Patriarch thought, staring at Samara's perfect, poised form. She seemed utterly invincible, standing there in the middle of the bar, her biotics glowing around her in corona. Aria's four bodyguards all raised their weapons, but Aria motioned them down. She rose to her feet, the air around her quivering with tension. She took hold of the balcony's railing, looking down on the intruder.

"Justicar Samara." Her voice throbbed with danger. "At last we meet in person. Have you enjoyed your time on my station?"

"This is your station no longer, Aria T'Loak," Samara pronounced. "Your time is over."

"Omega will _always_ be my station," Aria snarled. "Bodyguards—_Kill her!"_

"_Weapons down!"_ Anto's shout rang in the air. The other bodyguards froze, caught between their boss and their mistress. As Aria turned on him, Anto shrugged regretfully. "Sorry, Aria. I don't like the odds."

Sheer fury leapt across Aria's face, and her biotic corona burst into light. She stretched out one hand, and Anto gave a short, sharp cry: his head jerked on his neck and he collapsed to the ground with a gurgle, then lay still. Aria whirled from the corpse of her late lieutenant to the rest of the guards. "If the rest of you don't shoot her, I'll kill you myself!"

That was apparently good enough for the remaining three bodyguards; they rushed to take up firing positions along the balcony railing. And they were cut down. On the floor below, Samara gestured slightly: two of the bodyguards went flying, hurled off the balcony and into the ceiling so hard that Patriarch could hear their bones cracking inside their bodies, while the third one was pushed backwards by a wave of force, and slammed straight into the wall behind him. He slumped to the ground, lying unnaturally still. Samara did not so much as blink as she turned her attention to Aria.

"I had hoped you would be reasonable," she said regretfully. "But, since you will not…."

She drew back her hand and hurled a massive biotic energy blast straight at the balcony where they stood. Patriarch saw it coming in just enough time to activate his personal shielding; then there was a tremendous _booming_ sound, the ground shuddered and gave way underneath him, and he had the sickening sensation of falling through space. He heard his shields crackle at the impact with the floor, then crackle again as a section of destroyed flooring landed on top of him. He surged up, throwing the chunk of rubble aside with a strength born of desperation. _Aria—_

Dust filled the air. It took a moment before he could orient himself, but when he did, he spotted Aria, slithering out from underneath a pile of her destroyed seat of power. Her expression was frightening. _"Where is she?_" she raged. _"Where is that justicar bitch?"_

"_Aria!"_ At Samara's cry, both their heads snapped up, and Patriarch's breath caught in his throat.

Samara was hanging in mid-air in the center of Afterlife, her biotics flaring and crackling around her. Her eyes were glowing a smooth, pristine white, without iris or pupil. Energy danced up and down her form, shimmering at her fingertips, leaping about her like tongues of fire. Patriarch was only very faintly biotic himself—with the best amps on the market, he was strong enough to perhaps lift a glass of ryncol—but he knew enough to recognize that what she was doing was related to the "biotic charge" ability that human Vanguards had been developing. Nevertheless, the effect was still utterly terrifying. He had never seen anything like it before. Samara seemed like a goddess, like something out of this universe, completely beyond mortal comprehension, and as he huddled in the wreckage below, even his stout krogan hearts quailed within him.

As she hung there, Samara raised her hand and flung another devastating blast of biotic energy at the two of them. It impacted with a shattering concussion, and Patriarch was hurled sideways into a wall. His overstressed shields crackled and gave out, and he felt the thick plating of his skull smash into the hard surface. Shaking the disorientation off almost immediately, he scrambled to his feet and frantically looked around the club's interior, searching desperately for Aria.

He spotted her on the other side of the room from himself. She was climbing out of a pile of wreckage—shattered chairs, tables, and pieces of wall and ceiling—and her expression chilled Patriarch's blood. She was smiling, a fierce, deadly grin made up of excitement, rage, fear, and a supreme, utter recklessness, a willingness to stake everything on one toss of the dice. He had seen her look that way once before.

"_I've always wanted to kill a justicar._" The words were a low, throaty growl. Her own biotic corona flared to life around her.

And the battle was on.

Patriarch rapidly lost all illusions he might have had about actually being able to help Aria. He had everything he could do just to focus on _surviving._ The two women traded blast for blast with such speed and force that the bar seemed to be tearing itself apart around them: walls exploded, furniture went flying, computer consoles burst with deadly showers of sparks, whole sections of the ceiling came crashing down in chunks. Later, thinking back on it, Patriarch knew he should have run for the exit—it was open; Samara had torn the door off its hinges on the way in, there was no reason in the world why he couldn't just leave—but somehow it never occurred to him, and even if it had, he couldn't have done it. The fate of Omega—the chunk of rock that had been his home for over five hundred years—was being decided now, here in this bar, the same place that it had been decided over two centuries ago, and he could not look away. All he could do was retreat to a corner, huddling behind an upended table like some damn plateless salarian, and watch the titanic struggle unfolding before him.

Aria was breathtaking. She was there, all _there, _in a way he had not seen her since their own battle over two hundred years ago. Her biotics burned around her as brightly as a small sun, and she traded blasts and blows with Samara with a dark grin that spoke of a wild exhilaration, the thrill of exerting herself to the utmost against an opponent who was a worthy match. Everything she held dear was hanging in the balance, and she fought with everything she was, everything she had.

And Patriarch could see that it would not be enough.

For if Aria was fire, Samara was ice, cool, restrained, and completely unbreakable. None—not a single one—of Aria's wild, burning strikes reached her: either she simply evaded them, or else they burst harmlessly on the impenetrable wall of her defenses. She did not waste her energy in futile attacks; when she struck, she struck with an absolute economy of force and to devastating effect. Before long, Patriarch could sense that Aria was already beginning to tire; her strikes were growing wilder, more unpredictable, while Samara maintained her effortless, perfect precision. She was exhausting herself fruitlessly against Samara's unbreachable defense.

_She's not even trying…._ Patriarch's breath caught at the realization. A chill wave engulfed him. _Samara's not even __**trying**__. She's not using a __**quarter**__ of her full strength. Maybe even less than that. _ Samara was demonstrating enormous power, power such as he had never seen. Yet as he watched, a looming sense of _restraint _overwhelmed him—a sense that despite it all, she was holding back; that the demands of this combat were not even coming close to tapping the true depths of her abilities. He crouched behind the flimsy table he was using as a shield, overcome with awe. _Gods above….she's incredible…what she could __**do….**_

It ended simply. With a howl of frustration, Aria lashed out with her biotics. She ripped a section of the bar from the floor, hurling it at the justicar with a wild, desperate fury. With a single gesture, Samara brushed the massive chunk of debris aside, sending it shattering against the wall to her left. She reached out. Her hand clenched into a fist, and a wave of violet light suddenly surrounded Aria. Aria's entire body convulsed, as tendrils of the violet glow twined their way from Aria to Samara, wreathing her and sinking into her body. Her agonized, gurgling scream rang in Patriarch's ears, continuing and continuing to ring long after she had fallen silent. When the light died away, Aria collapsed into a twitching heap, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

The biotic glow around Samara died. The justicar tilted her head as she regarded the shivering form of her erstwhile enemy. Patriarch dared to rise and creep out from behind his table, clicking his claws on his knife hilt. The sudden silence in the bar was almost deafening.

Samara studied Aria for a moment more, then began to advance on her with long, firm strides. Aria was still trembling helplessly on the shattered floor, but she floundered, struggling to retreat. Samara's expression showed neither pity, nor triumph; there was something terrible about that slow, implacable approach. Closer she drew, closer and closer. Patriarch saw that Aria was almost sobbing in fear, and he was shocked to the core of his being to see it. His own guts churned within him. _Aria—Aria, no—Gods and ancestors, girl, I—_ Yet there was no stopping that deadly advance. Samara drew closer still, until she stepped forward and put one boot on Aria's neck. Aria turned her head, staring directly into his eyes. Her glance of desperate appeal rocked him like a biotic blast.

"_Patriarch!_" she cried in the voice of a child. _"Help me!_"

Samara's head came up at once, and her piercing gaze found him. Patriarch froze, held in counterpoise between two sets of eyes, dark and pale, young and old. Aria's eyes held all their long history together, the bonds that held them, knitted together out of blood and pain, loyalty and affection. In Samara's pale eyes, he read different things: restraint. Respect. Power. And a promise, of a sort he could not identify. She would not try to influence his decision, he could see that. But if he _did_ attempt to aid Aria, she would crush him. _At once and without mercy._

He hesitated for what felt like eternity, calculating advantages, weighing the balance. At last, he drew a breath. When he spoke, it felt as if the words were being wrenched out of him.

"I'm sorry, Aria," he said quietly. "Not this time."

The expression on her face in those last moments was something he would take to the grave. It slid into him like a knife. _ Not anger—__**hurt**__.__Betrayal. _Then Samara looked down.

"_Find peace in the embrace of the goddess."_ She twisted her boot. Patriarch looked away, but he heard the _crack._ Within him, his hearts were breaking. He stared at his talons, as behind him the life went out of what had once been Aria T'Loak.

[*]

Every bone in Patriarch's body seemed to be aching. Slowly, feeling even more like a decrepit cripple than he was, he began to pick his way through the shattered wreckage to the victorious and defeated. Samara did not move, simply watched him approach her. When he reached the two of them, he dropped to one knee. With one talon, he brushed Aria's cheek, then closed her eyes. Standing up again made him feel at least a century older.

"She was none of mine," he murmured. "She wasn't my daughter. Wasn't _anything_ to me, really."

"That does not make it easier."

Startled, he glanced up at Samara, but she gave no sign. Patriarch waited for her to say something such as _Thank you for your help, _or _I couldn't have done it without you—_words intended in gratitude that would have stung like whipscoring. She said nothing, and for that he was somehow grateful. Instead she turned away, her eyes roaming over the wreckage of Afterlife.

"You tore this place up," he rasped.

"Indeed." Samara nodded. She said no more, simply continuing to examine the damage.

"So what are you going to do now?" It came out as an accusation; some goad was driving him, perhaps the depths of his own pain. As she turned to look at him, he demanded, "You defeated Aria. By the rules that operate on this chunk of rock, that means you now own the place. So, what are you going to do? You going to stick around, actually do what you said you would earlier? Try to clean things up around here?"

Samara nodded. "Yes. That is my intention—for a while, anyway."

"For a _while?"_ Patriarch demanded.

"For a while," was her only reply. She was still running her eyes over the ruined bar; then her gaze found him and focused. "And you, Patriarch? You said earlier that you could not leave Aria. Yet Aria is now dead, and you are free. What will _you_ do? Will you return home, to Tuchanka?"

_Return to Tuchanka…_ Patriarch felt his jaw tighten. "Tuchanka isn't my home anymore," he said with deep bitterness. "I haven't been back there for five hundred years, and even when I _was_ back there there wasn't much to do anyway. The whole damn place was a ruin." _Much like this bar,_ he thought with a grimace. "Doubt it's changed much in the meantime—and even if it had, there's no place in what passes for krogan society for a beaten old krogan like me, without any _krantt_ or glory to speak of. No," he sighed. "Omega is my home now." _And how pathetic is that?_

"I see." That slight, startling smile again touched Samara's lips. "I had hoped you would say that."

"You—you did?"

"Of course. You said Omega is mine now—but I do not know how to rule it. Governing is beyond the scope of a justicar's usual duties. And besides…" Her gaze went past the wreckage of Afterlife, up to the station's ceiling, and seemingly out to the stars beyond the thick metal bulkhead. "Shepard's mission is not yet finished," she said quietly.

A shiver ran down Patriarch's spine. Perhaps it was something in the way she spoke, so calmly certain, or the way her eyes slid past him, as if fixed on something only she could see. "You're—you're sure?" he asked her.

Samara nodded, her pale eyes distant. "I can feel it. This is simply a pause…as if the universe is holding its breath. A moment in time, no more. The time will come, before very long, when Shepard calls to me again, summoning me away into danger, and I will go. Because I am sworn, and because…she is my friend." She turned and regarded Patriarch with that penetrating stare. "I will need someone by my side when that time comes. Someone who knows the station, knows how to rule. Who can hold it for me, when I must go, and see that all the good work I do is not undone if I do not survive. Someone strong. Honorable. Both respected, and worthy of that respect." That smile returned again. "Someone like you. If you will. Will you?"

The question hung there. It took Patriarch a moment to realize what she was asking and to overcome his amazement; another to marshal a response.

"I will." As he spoke, he realized that in truth, he'd already agreed; sometime between their first meeting and now, the question had been asked and answered without a word being said. "Hell, I did it for Aria. Might be nice to work for someone who actually has a heart, for a change," he added gruffly. Samara blinked and looked away.

"Perhaps," was all she said. Then she drew a breath and looked back at him.

"What is your name?"

"My…_name?_" Patriarch frowned.

"Yes. Aria called you 'Patriarch' to mock you. I do not wish to do the same," she replied.

"You mean, you want my…my _real_ name?" He snorted. "I haven't heard or used my real name in so long that _I _can scarcely remember it. Best keep calling me Patriarch. That's what everyone here knows me as, anyway."

Samara considered for a moment, lowering those intense, pale eyes. "If you think it best," she conceded at last. "Still—I would like to know. For myself."

"For yourself. Very well then." He had a moment of mild panic, suddenly realizing he _couldn't_ actually recall his name, before it came to him. "Urdnot," he said. "Urdnot Kruv."

"Urdnot Kruv." She smiled again, that small smile that somehow seemed to light up the darkest reaches of space. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

She reached out and clasped his hands in the middle of that shattered, ruined bar. It was strange: though Aria lay dead in the rubble along with the last two hundred years of his life, somehow—he couldn't have told how—it felt less like an ending than like….

_A new beginning._

_Finis._


End file.
